


Our Lives Are Colored the Same

by DjDangerLove



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Temporary Amnesia, hurt Joe, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 10:33:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25848112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DjDangerLove/pseuds/DjDangerLove
Summary: Sometimes when the world chews him up and spits him back out, Joe can’t remember anything and no one knows why. Andy was without explanation the first time it happened and she still leaves the room as empty handed as she was then whenever it happens now.The memory loss is temporary, lasting only a few minutes after he's brought back to life, but it leaves Joe in a panicked state of frenzied drawing for hours afterwards, sometimes days, stopping only when Nicky stills his shaking hands with his steady ones.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Comments: 21
Kudos: 447





	Our Lives Are Colored the Same

Yusuf paints the world in vivid color.

A single leaf gets three different hues of emerald, ocean waves swell with yellows and greens atop a specific blue, and a moon gets etched into off-white paper in a bound journal as a spherical mix of shades of gray.

A box of ten metallic pencils are harbored in his art bag in order to get the right tint of silver, copper, or gold of the hardware on any given safe house door and he never passes the vendor in Greece that carries the _exact shade of orange_ he claims he needs to paint Nicky’s favorite sunset in Venice. 

The weight of his duffle bag gets an eye roll full of suppressed fondness from Andy when they move between cities and a soft, _“An artist’s heart is heavy,”_ from Nile when she offers to pack their bags in the car. For all that she may be right, Nicky knows that it isn’t exactly the reason that Joe sees fit to carry fifteen different gray pencils that no one else could possibly distinguish one from the other. 

The reason, which Nile is finally getting to witness first hand, is much more burdensome than the weight of art supplies shoved in the bottom of a go bag. It’s the leaden fear tucked up underneath all of it, the kind that you can’t unpack and never leave behind that makes Joe stockpile pencils and paints and an excessive amount of journals. 

While his greatest terror is having to live after the world permanently tears Nicky from existence, it’s the weight of his second one that hangs heavy around his neck. Joe, the man who fills every house with story books of memories, is afraid of forgetting every single one of them. 

The thing is, as Nile currently standing over Nicky and Joe is about to find out, is that sometimes when the world chews him up and spits him back out, Joe can’t remember anything and no one knows why. Andy was without explanation the first time it happened and she still leaves the room as empty handed as she was then whenever it happens now. 

The memory loss is temporary, lasting only a few minutes, but it leaves Joe in a panicked state of frenzied drawing for hours afterwards, sometimes days, stopping only when Nicky stills his shaking hands with his steady ones before fingers are rubbed raw and pages are colored in crimson stains. 

“What’s happening?” Nile breathes shakily around the question, physically bracing herself for what she knows not, but brave enough to face it anyway. The success of the mission stirs her adrenaline despite the fact that Joe had taken a bullet to the head a few trigger pulls before the finish and it leaves her vibrating in a mix of concern and euphoria. Joe had gasped back to life like always, tugging her further under the latter, but then searched wildly for something he appeared to be unable to find. 

“Nicky?” Whether she was reiterating her question from before, or asking Joe if that’s not what he was looking for, she isn’t sure, but the man belonging to the name shushes her gently in Italian.  
He steps forward in a direction Nile has only known him to go, as if they have their own gravitational pull they can bend to their will he steps towards Joe, but the man scrambles backwards, boots slipping in loose blood on the floor and smearing lines like barriers between them. 

Joe shakes his head, eyes rapidly scanning the room from body to body, both dead and alive, and never settles on a single one until his back hits the wall and Nicky crouches down in front of him several feet away. 

“Yusuf,” he says, but it sounds different than any time Nile has heard him say it before. “Your name is Yusuf. We,” Nicky gestures at Nile, then at himself before continuing, “call you Joe.”

“What the fuck? Nicky?” Nile steps forward and Joe’s head nearly cracks against the brick pavers forcing him to stay in place. 

Nicky shushes her again, quick and neat in Italian and goes back to speaking to Joe before the echo dies out in the room. “Listen to my voice, Yusuf. Listen to me when I tell you that my name is Nicolo. It is a name you’ve known for centuries, a name that you loop the end of “N” to make the “L” and then go back to finish the letters in between when you write it. You’ve written it so many times before.”

Confusion is warring against the euphoria being flushed down to the pit of her stomach as Nile watches Nicky inch one step forward while staying crouched low to the ground. Joe doesn't appear to flinch, but the way his chest swells and deflates with panicked breath Nile thinks it would be hard to tell. 

“Good,” Nicky encourages as Nile follows Joe’s gaze as it locks onto the only man he’s ever had eyes for. “Keep looking at me, Yusuf. I am Nicolo. My eyes are blue and you use the third shade of it from your black box of colored pencils.”

The sweat beading on Joe’s forehead runs red as it streaks through the blood staining his face before disappearing into the scruff around his jawline. He scratches at it, pulling stained fingers away a few moments later.

“Red is your least favorite color, as is mine,” Nicky explains while drawing Joe’s attention back to him. He inches another step closer until the tips of his boots rest across the line Joe made with his and finishes, “but you like to use it to color the apple trees from Yantai and the morning skies in Egypt as they warm for a thunderstorm.” 

Joe’s breath hitches painfully as his brow furrows and his eyes squeeze tight. Nile watches Nicky close the gap between them in those few seconds so that he only needs to lean forward to touch the love of his life when he thinks he can. 

“H-how…” Yusuf says, voice completely wrecked of all identity Nile has come to know. He swallows, and holds his breath for a moment then lets his eyes fall open to Nicky. “How… do you know?”

Nicky smiles at him with just the corner of his mouth turning up, eyes round with the shape that Joe always draws them, full of love and that third shade of blue. “Because our lives are colored the same. The exact brown you see in the life lines of tree trunks you use to paint the strands of my hair and the color of your eyes.”

Joe’s breath hitches once, twice, and he sags with the exhale of the third. Nicky crosses the blood drawn line, knees wet with it but unbothered as he crouches in front of Yusuf and slowly reaches for him. 

The man steals air away as if Nicky might not let him have any, trapping it in his lungs until his jaw rests perfectly in Nicolo’s hand at the side of his face. He lets it go as Nicky does the same to gently shush him. 

“You love the rain,” Nicky continues as he slowly lifts his thumb to wipe a tear slipping down Joe’s cheek. “So you never use the same color of blue to paint teardrops and you use the faintest bit of pink in them because you say they carry the color of a person’s heart.”

“Why…” Joe says with a gentle shake of his head even as he wraps trembling fingers around Nicolo’s raised wrist. “Why?”

Nile steps closer, stands on the edge of what she thinks is the perimeter they need and wonders the same thing. _Why? Why is Nicky explaining these things? Why does Joe not remember them? Why the fuck is Nicky not freaking out?_

“Because you are my Yusuf, the love of my life. You are a man that paints black clouds as beautiful givers of light and blazing fires as the comforting warmth to a desperate man who has only ever known the cold.”

Nicky smiles when Joe’s fingers tighten on his arm unknowingly painful enough to leave bruises and keeps his eyes locked on Joe’s when the slightest bit of recognition bleeds into them. “You see the world in such vivid color, Yusuf, I am not surprised you cannot possibly remember each color you assign to every inch this world has to give. But whether you remember in color or shades of gray, or not at all, it’s alright, my love.”

“Nicky…” Joe breathes easier.

“It’s alright, because I’ll spend every minute of every day helping you discover it all over again. I’ll lay beside you in the pasture at our home in Ireland as you spend an entire day coloring pages of grass because that’s your favorite shade of green and I’ll let you profess your love to me in the dramatically loud and rude fashion you’re so fond of doing while I search for a book in the library so you can remember your favorite shade of pink as it blushes across my face.”

“I…” Joe starts as his lips begin to turn upward under his facial hair. “I do love that color.”

Nile nearly jumps at Nicky’s laugh, the sound loud compared to everything else before it and she feels herself start to uncoil with relief as the man leans forward to kiss Joe on the temple that isn’t coated in blood. 

“I know you do, habibi,” Nicky assures then kisses him again in the same spot. “I know. Do you remember now?”

Joe smiles at him, the blood in his teeth making it appear more gruesome than endearing to Nile, but Nicky meets him with no less enthusiasm when Joe leans forward to kiss him. 

“I remember.”

Nile steps forward when they break apart, the two of them looking at her with a tiredness she’s not quite use to and when Joe diverts his gaze, nearly hides behind Nicky like he should be ashamed of what just happened to him, Nile decides right then and there…. _fuck that._

“I’m pretty sure I saw a set of watercolor pencils back in the city at the bookstore. That’ll be easier for you to carry around than the paints,” she says and briefly reaches out to pat each of them on the shoulder. “I’ll let Andy know we plan to stop there before we head to the next city.”

After Nicky squeezes her arm with his free hand, she turns to leave in search of Andy waiting outside. She steps out into the night and takes in the color of the sky she once never gave a second thought to, thinking for the first time that if she ever had a desire to paint it she would start with purple atop a deep shade of blue before smearing a coal black across it.

When she finds Andy leaning up against the car a few blocks over, she tells her that when they get to the bookstore with the watercolored pencils, she plans to get a pack for herself because Nicky had been right when he said that Joe paints the world in vivid colors. Sometimes though, as Nile has just discovered, Nicky has to paint it just as vividly. 

And well, Nile just wants to make sure that if she ever needs to remind Joe of all his favorite colors then she wants to get the shade of Nicky’s embarrassment just right.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think then come yell at me on Tumblr @ DjDangerLove about all these idiots we love.


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